Conventional wisdom claims that life is a circle, but in truth? It’s more like a spiral.
We continually rise and fall from leader to learner and back again, but we never really circle back to where we started. We are always ahead of where we were before, like a spiral spinning forward, even though the falls might feel like recession. We learn, we grow, we even rise to become the best–which leads us to new experiences and new opportunities for more learning, more growing, and more humility. There, we slide into the unknowing of that learning. It can even feel like we’re going backwards, but that’s only temporary–soon, we’re rising up and regaining a new competence. We get stronger, smarter and wiser, and find ourselves back on top speeding towards the next opportunity–where, of course, we’ll learn all over again, and be the student once more! The spiral goes on and on, advancing us upward and forward in the ebb and flow of becoming the person we are meant to be.
A wheel goes round and round, it’s true, but it’s only in those rotations that it makes any forward progress. And while we, at times, may feel dizzy as we experience the constant rotation of life, notice that when you look back, the wheel leaves behind a line: not always straight, but always progressing.
